Hemingway, Ernest

Today is Friday. [Englewood, New Jersey: The As Stable Publications, 1926]

In 8s (7 x 5 in.; 189 x 128 mm).  Four leaves stitched with white silk thread into original pictorial and printed beige wrappers, as issued; the front cover with a reproduction of a Jean Cocteau drawing, signed “Jean,” and below it in imprinted script: “L’impuissance a convaincre”; the rear cover with the publisher’s imprint, the limitation notice, and a list of the other pamphlets in the series; a few light stains on covers, split along lower spine. Original envelope with a geometric design in black on front and the publisher’s address on rear flap; a bit age-toned.  Cloth slipcase.

Gerald and Sara Murphy — a Parisian woman friend of the Murphys — C. E. Fraser Clark, Jr. (acquired in the 1960s) — Matthew J. Bruccoli

 

Hanneman A5a; Reynolds, Hemingway: the Homecoming, p. 233, note 15, referring to this copy; the front cover and the letter were exhibited at the University of Virginia Library, December 1977–March 1978, and illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, in their time / 1920–1940, no . 48

 

First edition, limited to 300 numbered copies (260 for sale), of which this is no. 47. An extraordinary presentation copy to Gerald and Sara Murphy: inscribed by Hemingway on the front cover, with a two-page letter by him on a blank page and the inside rear cover, and with the list of As Stable Pamphlets on the rear cover annotated by him. Inscribed by Hemingway at the top of the front cover and across part of the Cocteau illustration: “For Gerald and Sara with more than all of Papa’s love — and don’t mind the Cocteau drawing —  they bought that first, Ernest.” Below Cocteau’s phrase at the bottom, Hemingway has written: “Suis convaincu.” His annotations to the list of As Stable Pamphlets on the rear cover consist of “Fairy” written next to the names Pavel Tchelitchew, Rene Crevel, and Jean Cocteau; a drawing of a heart with a question mark on it next to Gertrude Stein and H. Phelan Gibb; and the comment “Don’t know them” next to Paxton Howard and A.E H.  The list of the four pamphlets is bracketed by Hemingway with the remark: “Papa’s in gentle company. Maybe it’s a Fairy’s house organ.”  

 

This copy was sent to the Murphys not long after Hemingway returned to Paris (on 19 October 1926) from a week of attending bullfights in Zaragoza with Archibald MacLeish. In Spain the two “talked about religion, for Hemingway was convincing himself that he had been a Catholic ever since his 1918 night wounding at Fossalta ... MacLeish kidded Hemingway about the sexual lives of the more tawdry Catholic popes, some of whom, he said were flaming homosexuals. That got them kidding back and forth about the homosexuals they knew and others they’d read about. MacLeish said that Shakespeare of the sonnets was suspect, as was Julius Caesar. Hemingway complained that MacLeish had taken away several revered names, giving him in return only the ‘great’ Yale football team” (Reynolds, Hemingway: the Homecoming, p. 70). Hemingway’s letter, which covers the final blank page and the inside rear cover, is mainly about this kidding around with MacLeish: “... Archie read me a grand letter from Sara to Ada [Mrs. MacLeish]. I will write you a fine letter soon — but today it is raining. I am very comfortable at 69 (rue Froidevaux he hastens to add) and about as happy as the average empty tomato can [Hemingway and his wife Hadley had separated and he was living in Gerald Murphy’s Paris studio]. Archie and I went to Zaragoza and had a fine trip. He took away from me — with a couple of books and his fine legal mind — the Popes, Caesar and Shakespeare (all Fairies) and The Holy Grail (just a goddam lie or legend) and gave me in exchange A Great Yale Football Team (they’d just beaten Dartmouth!). Well we got home and the next Sunday I read the paper and Holy Cross or some place like that had beaten Yale 33–6. So I wrote Archie a poem and said I was sending back his great Yale Team ... and would he return me by return post all the Popes, Caesar, Shakespeare and The Holy Grail...I love you both very much ... and will be pleased we say pleased to see you — It is swell that Gerald is working so well [on his paintings] and I will be pretty excited to see the stuff ... Bumby [his three-year-old son] and I lived together for 10 days, while Hadley was on a trip, and one day when I bought a harmonica and a glace and he was holding the one and eating the other at the café he said, ‘La vie est beau avec Papa.’” Laid in is a typed letter signed, 1 page, 8vo, 1 March 1973, from Archibald MacLeish to C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr., a former owner of this pamphlet, giving the background of Hemingway’s letter: “Part of an extended kidding game which Ernest invented when we got back from Zaragoza ... It was funny in Zaragoza and funnier in Antibes and the letter you have is the plum in the pudding. What a delight to read Ernest in that mood and in the years when he was still fond of Gerald Murphy ...”

 

“Today is Friday,” a brief one-act play involving three Roman soldiers drinking in a Jerusalem tavern following Christ’s crucifixion, was written, along with two short stories, by Hemingway in one day in May 1926 in Madrid. “In mid-August, Edith Finch [one of The As Stable publishers — another being George Platt Lynes, later a noted photographer] sent him a copy of Gertrude Stein’s Description of Literature and asked him to be part of The As Stable Pamphlet series featuring unknown and ‘very well-known’ authors, saying that Gertrude recommended him. Having no essays at hand, he sent instead ‘Today is Friday.’ The pay was only 400 francs, but he knew there was no American market for any story that took liberties with Christ’s crucifixion” (Reynolds, Hemingway: the Homecoming, p. 57). The piece was collected in Men Without Women the following year.

 

Gerald and Sara Murphy were the glamorous American expatriates whom Hemingway met in the fall of 1925 —  introduced by F. Scott Fitzgerald —  and whose motto was the Spanish saying, “Living well is the best revenge.” The Murphys lived well indeed on inherited money, were seriously involved in the arts (Gerald Murphy prefigured Pop art in his own paintings), and were noted for their hospitality at their French Riviera summer home, “Villa America.” The two were particularly close to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The Murphys attended their first feria of San Fermin at Pamplona with Hemingway in July 1926 (a few months before this copy of “Today is Friday” was presented to them); afterwards, as noted above, Gerald gave Earnest the use of his studio in Paris. Fitzgerald used them as models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night and dedicated the novel to them. To the best of our knowledge no other presentation copies (nor letters) from Hemingway to the Murphys have come on the market.